Page 67 of If Looks Could Kill

Pearl knew it was him. She smelled it upon him when she passed him in the stairway. Even before Mrs. McNamara warned her, vaguely but urgently, to keep clear of That Man.

When she purchased his newspaper, there he was, on the front page. Not a picture. Not a name she knew yet. The same instinct that drew her eyes to the article had drawn her feet to this house, last night, and to the HELP WANTED, INQUIRE WITHIN sign posted today on the door.

Her task is Jack the Ripper. Of course it is. Nothing less than the world’s most feared murderer for her, thank you very much.

They cling to him, the shades of his victims. They cry out: he is an offense to nature. A spiritual stench. People sense something off with him and cross to the other side of the street.

But not she. She did not cross the street.

Miss Goody Two-Shoes Love Thy Neighbor ran into him exiting a carriage here, on this very block, when she and Tabitha visited Grace Church yesterday.

He was the man. She recognized him immediately.

Something in that contact changed her. Perhaps the metaphysical blood still on his hands. The aura of his haunting ghosts.

Even if Miss Stella had not planted the idea in her mind, Pearl would know that one of them is a sister Medusa. She can feel it. Before he ruined Pearl’s own life, he murdered one of her own.

Yesterday, she, like all the world, was terrified of Jack the Ripper. Tonight, she will sleep under his roof. He has marked her; he has made her; tonight, it’s he who should fear her.

It is perplexing, though. The contrast couldn’t be more stark between the dark glamour—the mystique, almost—of ruthless stealth and murderous efficiency that has surrounded the Whitechapel killer in the newspapers and the pedestrian way in which this fussy, irritable, self-absorbed, pock-cheeked man named Francis—Francis!

—orders Pearl and Mrs. McNamara, the landlady, about.

The time is soon. The moment is near. She is the weapon called forth for such a threat to womankind as Jack the Ripper.

She is glad it’s him. When she is done, she will know her cause was just.

Those murdered women deserve justice.

Miss Stella would not shirk from justice.

His future victims deserve rescue.

Pearl is ready to give Jack the Ripper exactly what he deserves, and when the time comes, she will know what to do.